nclusion."

"And meanwhile," said Mrs. Fisher, getting up, for the cold of
the stone was now through, "I shouldn't trouble my head if I were you
with considerings and conclusions. Women's heads weren't made for
thinking, I assure you. I should go to bed and get well."

"I am well," said Scrap.

"Then why did you send a message that you were ill?"

"I didn't."

"Then I've had all the trouble of coming out here for nothing."

"But wouldn't you prefer coming out and finding me well than
coming out and finding me ill?" asked Scrap, smiling?

Even Mrs. Fisher was caught by the smile.

"Well, you're a pretty creature," she said forgivingly. "It's a
pity you weren't born fifty years ago. My friends would have liked
looking at you."

"I'm very glad I wasn't," said Scrap. "I dislike being looked
at."

"Absurd," said Mrs. Fisher, growing stern again. "That's what
you are made for, young women like you. For what else, pray? And I
assure you that if my friends had looked at you, you would have been
looked at by some very great people."

"I dislike very great people," said Scrap, frowning. There had
been an incident quite recently--really potentates. . .

"What I dislike," said Mrs. Fisher, now as cold as that stone she
had got up from, "is the pose of the modern young woman. It seems to
me pitiful, positively pitiful, in its silliness."

And, her stick crunching the pebbles, she walked away.

"That's all right," Scrap said to herself, dropping back into her
comfortable position with her head in the cushion and her feet on the
parapet; if only people would go away she didn't in the least mind why
they went.

"Don't you think darling Scrap is growing a little, just a
little, peculiar?" her mother had asked her father a short time before
that latest peculiarity of the flight to San Salvatore, uncomfortably
struck by the very odd things Scrap said and the way she had taken to
slinking out of reach whenever she could and avoiding everybody except
--such a sign of age--quite young men, almost boys.

"Eh? What? Peculiar? Well, let her be peculiar if she likes. A
woman with her looks can be any damned thing she pleases," was the
infatuated answer.

"I do let her," said her mother meekly; and indeed if she did
not, what difference would it make?

Mrs. Fisher was sorry she had bothered about Lady Caroline. She
went along the hall towards her private sitting-room, and her stick as
she went struck the stone